Building Your Online Brand: Website Terms Demystified

So, you’ve decided you need a website and you’re talking to a highly-recommended web design, developer, or studio. They start babbling on and on, using words that make no sense, and you understand about half of what they’re saying. You nod and smile, because you don’t want to appear unhip.

In an effort to help the non-nerds, I’ve put together this cheat sheet of handy website-related terms.

Accessibility: Don’t confuse with usability. Accessibility refers to the (happily, standard) practice of making your site’s content available to the visually impaired. This includes practices like using a legible font, a colour scheme that’s easy for colour-blind individuals to distinguish, and offering screen-reader compatible images.

API: Documented steps to help developers access a web-based service. For example, your website developer would use the Google Maps API to embed an interactive Google Map right on your “Contact Us” page. Not all APIs are free!

Back-end coding/development: The nuts and bolts of a complex site will use a database (usually mySQL) and a coding language (usually PHP) to drive the actual content and functionality. This is the back-end coding. The public just sees the result.

Blog (from “Weblog”): A website or section of a website that features constantly updated content, usually searchable and organized into date-based archives as well as topic categories. Search engines love them. Planning a corporate website? Call it a “News” or “Media Releases” section instead but keep the functionality the same.

CMS (Content Management System): This is a system that will let you manage your website without knowing any code at all. Most CMS’s have an easy to use editor, hidden behind a login screen, to help you control the pages (or listings, or photo galleries, or blog posts, or whatever) that make up your site. CMS websites cost more to develop but less overall, since you won’t need to ask a coder to make small changes in the future. Common CMS’s: Drupal, Joomla!, WordPress.

Control panel (cpanel): A special logged-in area of your web hosting where advanced features are set up, for example, email addresses, databases, or password protection.

Domain name: www.pixeltesting.com is an example of a domain name. It just refers to the address or URL. Think of a domain as a street address, referring to the home that is your web hosting. You have to pay for one to have it, and it must not already be claimed.

e-Commerce: Shopping cart, the ability to buy stuff online.

Flash: Software used for animations and games. Many popular cartoons are created using Flash, including My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. You can also build a website using Flash, as long as you don’t want to update it ever again or view it on an iPhone.

Footer: The bottom of the page, where you should have links to any legal notices, contact information, or a sitemap.

Front-end coding/development: The visual appearance of your website is controlled by HTML (markup language) and CSS (style sheets). Maybe some Javascript (a scripting language that isn’t Java). These are examples of front-end coding: they affect the front (public) part of your website.

FTP: File Transfer Protocol. This will let you (or more often, your web developer) stick your files on your web hosting server. Requires special software and a server address (usually ftp.yoursitehere.com) and username/password.

Google Analytics: A must-have for any website, this free service will tell you how popular your website is, and some basic information about who is visiting it.

Header: The top of the page, where you’ll probably have the navigation and your organization/business’ logo.

Mobile-first design: The principle that you FIRST design the mobile layout of your website, THEN the full layout. It’s way easier to develop a responsive website this way.

Mobile site versus mobile app: A mobile site is just a website that’s narrow and looks good on a mobile phone. A mobile app is software you can purchase or download for your phone, that takes up permanent “space” on your phone or tablet. They are not the same thing.

Navigation: The primary row of buttons or links that take you to your website’s pages.

Responsive design: A flexible website design that adapts to the size of your web browser window. This allows a mobile phone to access your website in a more readable format, without needing a second website just for phones.

Search engine: Google. Not the same as the white bar on your web browser where you type a url to visit a site (I hope).

SEO (Search Engine Optimization): This is a general concept used to describe making your website friendly to Google, Bing, and other search engines. You need this for people to find your website.

Sidebar: Usually a secondary navigation on the left (or less commonly right) side of the website page’s content. This might link to other, related pages, or contain blog links like category pages.

Sitemap: Can refer to 1) In the planning stages, a flowchart showing what pages or sections a website will use or 2) a human-readable page listing all your site’s links/pages or 3) a search-engine readable file listing all your site’s links/pages.

Social Media: Facebook and Twitter and stuff.

Splash page: A trend that died out 10 years ago. You don’t need one. (It refers to a front page of a site that contains your logo or image or animation, plus a “click here to enter” link/button. Some splash pages also featured awful music.)

Subdomain: Instead of the www, other words can go in front of your domain name and point to other sections of your website (or other sites entirely). You might have, for example, blog.yoursitehere.com .

Theme/template: If you have a complex website, or use a CMS, the website’s layout will usually be determined by a template or theme. This refers to a series of files that generate front-end code for your site. A good designer or developer will create one from scratch custom to your needs. If you don’t have much money, you can simply install a free or cheap template or theme (for a CMS like WordPress, millions of themes exist.) A bad designer or developer will install a free template for you and pretend it was a lot of work and charge you a lot of money.

URL: A website link or address. E.g. http://www.yoursitehere.com/vanilla . Not pronounced “earl” or even “oorl”, just spell out the letters please.

Usability: Rather self explanatory. How easy to use is your website? Can your visitors find their way around? How long does the site take to load?

Web browser: The software you use to access a website. E.g. Chrome or Firefox or Internet Explorer. Please don’t use old versions of Internet Explorer.

Web hosting: Your website lives here. There are hundreds of thousands of web hosting services out there. Your designer or developer should recommend a good, cost-effective one for you based on your needs. Do not use Go Daddy.

Website design: The visual look and feel of the website. Most web designers are not good developers. (I like to think I’m an exception.)

Website development: The code that drives the website’s content. Most web developers are not good designers. (I like to think I’m an exception.)

Wireframe: A grid used to develop the layout of a website.

These are my definitions based on several years of working with clients and learning how to carefully explain new, and very technical, concepts in a way laypeople will understand. I don’t claim that these are the most accurate definitions in the world. Some developers would likely argue with my non-tech definition of, say, API, and how I’ve only defined it within the narrow context of web-based usage. Usability is a concept that people can investigate for years and involves psychology as well as technical study. But, I hope this at least provides a starting point for all of you out there who ever wondered just what that nerd was actually saying.